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Steve Jobs And Jeff Bezos Meet The Segway
deadwood writes "Ever wanted to know what Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos really thought about the Segway the first time he saw it? At the Harvard Business School site, there's an excerpt from the new book 'Code Name Ginger', giving a recounting of the Apple and Amazon bosses' first impressions of the device. Steve Jobs' gut reaction, quoted in the article: 'I think it sucks!'"
Dean Kamen took a big chance inviting Jeff Bezos, he's lucky Bezos didn't run out and try to patent the idea.
Mike
Let's hope they rode it better than you-know-who.
The coolest voice ever.
(I agree with Jobs, btw.)
sulli
RTFJ.
I won't argue the above remark. Without a doubt it is the truth.
<rant>
But man can he act like an arrogant prick!
I love the products his company makes, and I respect his opinions, but the man needs some serious lessons in humility and respect for others. Servant leadership, lead by serving and showing others, not just by blasting them for being wrong.
</rant>
Okay then.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
this week i reach 1,000 miles on the segway ht. i really like mine.
the segway ht fits my travel needs pretty well, i don't think it's for everyone-- but it's worked out okay for me. i run, walk, ride a bike, take cars but most of my travel is via a segway...i wrote it up, here's the travel log so far:
http://www.bookofseg.com/100days/
it didn't replace walking, i walk, cycle and jog. the segway replaced my car. i don't think it can do that for everyone, but it did for me.
steve jobs said "i think [the design] sucks. its shape is not innovative, it's not elegant and it doesnâ(TM)t feel anthropomorphic". it's very functional and the desgin (in my opinion) is good for version 1 of a product, i'm looking forward to the new models which are smaller, lighter with greater range.
cheers,
pt
They think something about an object, great for them. What's next? Uproar in the slashdot community because Steve Jobs farted? This is supposed to be a new site (or at least that's what I keep telling myself), not some sort of weird online tabloid for the geek culture.
Hate me!
A close friend of Jobs overheard him say:
"This is just like a Windows PC. It moves rather slowly, and at any moment you might get dumped off"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Having had a number of investor meetings in my time, the PITA investor is rarely achieves anything useful other than making you feel like shit, and giving themselves an ego boost.
There is no excuse for bad manners in any setting, and in that context I would have probably told Jobs as much.
you probably saw this
http://www.gothamist.com/archive/002674.php
Disco Stu was talkin' to you.
Yeah, I would imagine after the slap on the wrist M$ got, Steve Jobs thinks he sucks too.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
'It think it sucks!'
I'm impressed. I didn't realize the thing was both sentient, and self-loathing.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030 613/168/4ds7k.html 0 612/170/4dnhg.html
:)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/03
I hear those things are a bitch to ride.
saying "Yeah it sucks man!!!"
/. Personnaly, I am excited, but as an AC will undoubtedly tell me soon, who cares what I think.
Maybe its not the greatest thing ever (I don't know, never seen one in person), but for a brand new product that is not a ripoff I think its doing pretty well. How great was MacOs 1.0 compared to OSX? Not very good at all, but its a starting point, the initial idea is out there, and basically it works. Now its time to expand and make it better.
Everyone is always ranting on here about how nothing is innovative anymore, and that all of these laws stifle innovation, and when something that is actually innovative finally comes out, here come the naysayers. I guess I should expect this from
Great Linux Site
Not the idea itself.
Mr. Jobs doesn't like it because it's not "iSegway". It needs to have nice shapely plastic bumpers that are see-through, so you can see the nice engine doing it's thing. And the gyros need to light up when they work. When the iSegway stops it also needs to play a very warm "DING" tune, something that's fuzzy and nice like "You've Got Mail", but maybe more like "You've just stopped".
It's all about looks, people.
Never noticed this happening before.. There is a typo on the article synapsis on the front page, but not on the article page itself (ie if you click Read More).
:-\
From the front page:
Steve Jobs' gut reaction, quoted in the article: 'It think it sucks!'"
From the article page:
Steve Jobs' gut reaction, quoted in the article: 'I think it sucks!'"
Is someone really manually retyping these twice?
I hope, if so, that Slashdot has at least employed a Cadre of Elite Geese to do this... Oh yea it says right here that they have.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
After a while, Steve gets up and starts to look around. He looks at the framed dollar bill on the wall and notes that the bar opened in 1987 (long after his Macintosh computer came out.
He goes over to the windows, and verifies that they can be opened and closed, and also minimized (with the use of shades). Next, he looks behind a table and finds a mouse. It is only after he finds the trashcan behind the bar that he decides to sue the bar owner for infringment of his GUI patents.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Steve Jobs is right. It looks like a medical device more than a consumer product. Who wants to drive a Popemobile when they can drive a Ferrari?
Jeff Bezos tries to patent a method of riding the segway where the rider does not fall off.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
IT SUCKS. Someone needs to shoot the person who made those pieces of crap. First off, they don't have anything to make them visible in the evening hours (reflectors/lights). Combine that with being totally quiet and you have an accident waiting to happen. I almost got run over by one of them on the way to the bar the other day. I went to step out from the sidewalk on to the street and one comes zooming out in front of me. It's large footprint made every car that had to pass it move into the oncoming lane of traffic (totally in the oncoming lane if the segway had to pass a parked car). I understand that it has some cool technology, but they are an annoyance to the drivers and pedestrians that have to deal with them.
when all is said and done, weren't the problems actually legitimate stumbling blocks for Ginger?
people haven't bought them, they were overpriced, and they don't look that impressive.
it's a $X,000 scooter, at least that's what it looks like.
a Viper is just another really big engine, but put it in the right body....
Jobs said the design sucked. Who knows what it looked like back then? He's talking about the shape, the way it looks. I'd say the Segway looks pretty cool right now. Chances are that what Kamen put together out of cardboard boxes was a crude prototype. They probably did get a design firm involved to finalize the shape and appearance of the device. Jobs is right, a good industrial design firm can produce devices that look like works of art.
Steve Jobs is referring to the appearance of the Segway. The article summary misquotes this quite deceptively.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
...a skinny Marvin, the depressed andriod?
Do not read this sig.
-----
Jobs: Will it come with Firewire?
Dean: Um... Firewire? Why would it--?
Jobs: Will it come with Firewire? Will it?
Dean: I don't understand what you're--
Jobs: You really ought to license Firewire from us and slap a logo on this thing and that's all there is to it.
Dean: But what on earth would people want--?
Jobs: Why would they not want the the most reliable, insanely fast connectivity solution built in to this revolutionary device? How will they sync their Palms and iPods to this? Have you thought about that?
Dean: That's ridiculous. I don't--
Jobs: Okay. Nevermind. This sucks.
------
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Partly, explained Tim, because giving our code to someone else would be a great risk. Not a good reason, in Jobs's view, because the code could easily be reverse-engineered. No it couldn't, said Tim. Could, said Jobs.
That was pretty funny to me. Is this a guy who's been bitten by the reverse-engineering phenomenon before, do you think?
And people wonder why Apple gets testy about Aqua themes... I'd be testy to, if I was the victim of one of the biggest UI ripoffs in history. (I'm not sayin' he's right.. I'm just sayin'.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Its interesting to get unfiltered Steveness like this. For those decrying his rudeness... where have you been? He has been like this from the beginning.
The important thing is he was giving them the unvarnished truth. His insightfulness was genuine- he saw directly to the heart of the issues.
The insiders were obviously much too close to things, too sure of themselves. They had insulated themselves for too long- they would have benefitted much more if they had brought outsiders like Jobs and Bezos' much earlier in the process.
His rejection of the pleasantries and Powerpoint crap was the essential "Don't waste my time" of someone who actually values their time. He has two companies to run- he doesn't need to waste time watching somneone click through a stupid time-wasting presentation.
I am not like him at all- much too polite in real life. But he sure as hell makes sure things happen and he makes real products that people will pay premium dollars for. They should have paid even closer attention to what he said than they did.
Thanks Steve! Now I have a whole new goal for when I present my next project pitch to the captains and commanders I work with!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
http://www.woz.org/seg/ - Steve Wozniak, the *brains* behind Apple, seems a lot more Segway enamoured.
Seriously, this guy pops up everytime there's a segway article.
How much do they pay you? Please tell me they pay you.
-- taking over the world, we are.
i'm surprised by jobs' comments but i shouldn't be. his hardlined stance and staunch trenching of ideas is exactlly why he was fired in the 80s but his reaction toward the segway screams what he's doing at apple. after reading the article, doesn't it suggest that he is more of a force at Apple in pushing the UI, business strategy, product/manufacturing strategy than anyone else? Its clear that Jobs respects designers ("They'll give you stuff that will make you shit in your pants...") and it seems like Jobs hands ideas off to designers to give him something he doesn't know he wants (iMac, iPod UI, translucent plastics).
considering everything that went wrong with the Segway launch (how many people have ACTUALLY seen a ginger in person?) its possible to say that Jobs was partially right. the article talks about the ginger but it screams the way Jobs thinks and approaches a problem. the launch of ginger is interesting but give me a book about Jobs rants from the past 8 years and I'll shell out for that. Not to mention the Pixar vs Disney negotiations... (Disney is going to get ownned)
just ranting...
doesn't it make you wonder about WWDC being Apple's internal code for 'We Will Delight Crowds'?
"Only a moron could fall off a segway."
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
That BETTER get a +5 Funny.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
If it sucked, shouldn't the code name have been Monica instead of Ginger?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
His daughter pushed him.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
i don't get paid anything, i don't work with or for segway in any way (read my site) i'm just someone who bought a segway and writes about my experiences with it.
it does seem i'm the only person who has a segway that reads slashot and is willing to post (and get all sorts of nasty comments and insults). have at it.
More specifically, with sources:
0 0. html
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4691603,
The 'mobile germ warfare labs' were, in fact, hydrogen producers for artillery balloons. Sold to Iraq by the UK. Oops.
What's the betting this gets zero play time in the US media?
Meet the Megway
My mind is revolting against itself! Who or what am I supposed to like?
P.S. Please, someone, tell me what I can do on a Segway that I cannot do on a bicycle.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Anyone who owns a business not built on other people's innovations isn't likely to be selling anything of worth...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
>>> "Heh. Yeah, and Apple has what percent of market share?"
You can't visit a popular technology-oriented discussion board these days without hearing the oft-misconceived phrase, "Apple has 5% of the market and Windows has 95%.
There are two things wrong with this statement, the first being that if Apple has five, Windows must have 95. We as users of alternative operating systems know this not to be the case. Of course, a considerable number of desktop PCs do not bear the Windows logo.
The second problem is the implication that "market-share" can be used interchangeably with "installed-base." When most people use the word "market-share", what they really mean is "installed-base."
For example, while Apple's Macintosh market-share may be 3 percent, its installed-base is approximately 10 to 12 percent of the computing industry, a figure that's roughly similar to that of Linux based PCs.
When these figures are coupled with the remaining alternative operating systems on the market, Windows installed-base works out to be somewhere in the way of 80 percent -- a far cry from the 95 figure that is often touted.
So how does market-share play into the picture you ask?
Market-share is determined by quarterly or annual sales figures. The problem with market-share statistics is that it implies that all computers retain the same level of usability over time. It assumes that once a computer is sold, it will retain its productivity status for as long as its parts continue to function.
Unfortunately, usability statistics and replacement purchasing habits of consumers vary significantly between platforms thus causing the market-share figure to look skewed.
Linux users (for example) are known to keep aging computer hardware useful long after it was left for dead by its former Windows using owner. The open source community consistently manages to squeeze every last ounce of processing power from even the most aged hardware available.
Similarly, Mac users are known to keep their computers as primary productivity tools until the gears fall off. This is really a testament to the quality that Apple incorporated into its hardware and software over the years.
Unfortunately, the incorporation of quality into these platform's coding efforts will only fuel the notion that they are far less popular as what they are as long as market-share is the most commonly used gauge to determine platform popularity.
Because the Linux operating system's distribution model isn't tied directly to sales, it will never get a truly accurate gauge as long as market-share is touted over installed-base.
Apple on the other hand, may be in a better situation for the foreseeable future.
As we all know, the troubled economy has caused desktop PC purchases to fall to an all time low. This fact may actually work to Apple's advantage.
Everything Apple has been working toward pivots on the release of OS X running on next generation hardware.
Apple is scheduled to release next generation professional hardware in the coming weeks. The release of this hardware, when coupled with Apple's Panther operating system starts the completion of Steve Jobs' rebuilding of Apple.
It's this combination, which the computer using populace has been waiting for, many of which have said that they've been holding back their computer purchases for Apple to get the time table right.
This sudden sales windfall will occur in parallel with the PC industry's slow sales rate, which means that as long as the semi-misleading market-share statistic continues to be touted; Apple's percentage will likely jump from its current 3 percent status to double-digit growth, (somewhere in the 12 percent range) in as few as 6-9 months.
Remember, marketshare for any given company is calculated in relation to the sales of its competators. This will cause Apple's market share to make an even larger spike considering the fact that each individual PC manufacturer's sales wont be there to counter Apple's.
Of course, if the technology spinmeisters try to turn the table and tout installed-base (as they should have all along), Apple's current 12 percent status is covered there too.
When I read the account of the meeting, my impression of Steve Jobs was similar to that of what I have received of other effective senior executives of large companies.
1. He is a very quick study and he came in prepared. It was a bit strange that he had notes written on his hand but he knew what he wanted to say.
2. He had an agenda. He clearly didn't like the design and had issues with the lack of an introduction plan and the idea to manufacture on their own.
3. He's been around the block and part of his questions and statements are really tests to see how well everybody is prepared. I'm sure if anybody knows how quickly something could be copied, it would be Jobs.
4. It's interesting to me to hear that people think that he is an arrogant prick - I guess I've worked with a lot of them over the years.
From my experience with this type of executive (as well as my own experiences over the years), what I walked away from this article is that Kamen and the company that he produced aren't in the league they need to be for the product to be a success. They clearly weren't prepared for businessmen of the calibre Bezos and Jobs.
This article probably explains to me why the Segway hasn't been a great success - instead of Kamen, who's a great product idea man, they needed some kind of arrogant prick like Jobs to control the project.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The cat's been let out of the bag and people are going to buy a book about the development of a scooter?
.25 Mach. Well, not me really, but a ton of other people did:)
This product has been the biggest letdown since the year 2000. I waited, white-knuckled and anxious, for way too long in hopes that I'd be able to zip across the countryside 40 feet in the air and at
The segway is an excellent example of what happens when you don't give out enough details concerning a product and act in extreme secrecy all to protect your whiz-bang idea of a $5000 scooter.....or SCO unix source code...
Seeing as how I am the only apple user, and one of three programmers, for a company that writes software for use under .NET, I'd have to say that everything you said in your conceit is absolutely untrue. I am able to access everything on the networks and use every program I need to use. My PC is not twice as fast as the laptop nor is it twice as expensive...the laptop is slower, but only when you don't take into account my workflow, which is significantly faster on the laptop. And because my mac apps don't crash, I never lose time RETYPING things like that hottie Ellen Feiss.
And your conceit fails to account for the fact that the auto world DOES exactly what you said it does. The Ford F-150 is twice the price and slower than the Focus ZX. "But you can't compare the two...they're used for different things!" Aha. Now you're getting it, my little troll.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Job's comments were spot-on. He was blunt and rude so that they would listen to his points and they were really lucky to get advice from someone with Job's experience, and they should have listened instead of getting irritated and trying to get back to their meeting agenda. Agendas should be used to help start a discussion, not to stop it!
The account made the Segway people sound like amateurs who suddenly found themselves playing in the major leagues. Jobs was doing them a favor by playing the role of a grizzled old coach and being very blunt in trying to talk them out of doing some stupid things.
I wish I could get Steve Jobs to stay up all night thinking about my new product! They should've listened more to what he had to say.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The following was related to me by my co-worker Eric, who was the first American employed at Apple Japan:
Shortly after Eric arrived in Japan in the early 80's, he accompanied Steve Jobs on a visit to Canon. Cannon recently introduced a desktop copier which intrigued Steve Jobs. At the meeting Steve Jobs challenged the Canon execs and engineers to design a smaller laser printer the same way they were able to shrink the size of a copier.
In those days a laser printer was about the size of a washing machine or a large business copy machine. The only laser printers available were floor models only; nothing you could put on a desktop.
One year later Steve Jobs was invited back to Canon in Japan to see the results of his challenge. Eric went with Steve, a female translator who worked for Apple Japan, and a Japanese manager working for Apple. Steve Jobs and Eric were the only Americans there at the meeting, and only the Apple employees spoke English; none of the Canon people did. All communication from Steve Jobs to the Canon people were done via the translator.
When they got to Canon, a roomful of proud, beaming Canon engineers and managers presented Steve Jobs with their 'minaturized' laser printer - no longer the size of an American washing machine, just perhaps the size of a Japanese washing machine. Just the same it was not the desktop model that Steve Jobs envisioned.
When the interpreter relayed the question from the Canon folks asking what he thought of the their new laser printer, she really squirmed when Jobs said "Tell them it is a piece of shit!"
It's a great book!
The Hollywood summary would go something like: "Soul of a New Machine" meets "Citizen Kane".
I read an advanced reader copy and really enjoyed it. Much more than I expected. Before I read the Introduction I was in eye-rolling mode "Another paeon to Dean Kamen". Fortunatly it isn't. It shows his good traits and his weakeness.
It is an intereting view of how an engineering team moves from a good idea to research project to production mode. And how a smart, guy with vision can get in the way of this.
Dean Kamen comes off as a rather souless, monomanical patriach with a serious control issue. I would have like to have heard more about him out of work hours.
Steve Jobs (and Bezos and Doerr) all make interesting cameo apperances. The "shit your pants" meeting in the excerpt is the most hilarious part of the book.
Steve Kemper is a good writer and an interesting speaker too.
Strongly recommended.
Just had a SegWay rolling around the backyard a few hours ago. Turned out to be the Public Service of NH (the electric company) meter reader. Since many of the meters are wired for radio, she just glides within range of the meter, grabs the reading, and then takes off for the next building.
She absolutely loves the device. Says she gets about 2 hours from the battery depending on how much rough terrain she goes over (you should see our sidewalks) and has a spare set for up to 4 hours total travel.
The Segway itself is shared with a nearby town for their meter readings.
As amazing as it is to watch someone actually working on one of these things, it was even more amazing to see her go up to a house and step off the SegWay in order to do a manual reading. Watching the SegWay balance by itself takes you right back to all those basic feedback control experiments from college. --R
"Users can use the funky squiggly key if they want an alternate method."
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
... and Bezos has the patent on shoulder pads.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
yep.
you can email me, call me, look at my personal journal of technology or my segway owner journal. i put it all out there to share with folks good and bad, have at it. insult me, poke me, it's all fine. i write books about mobile devices and rich media, i work for the company that did bmwfilms, i live in seattle, wa. i use a segway but do not work for them in any way or get paid to do anything involving the segway, never have. i love reading slashdot, it's been my home page for years, i subscribe to support them, i have an imac, an ipod, xp machines, a linux box, nokia 3650, a pocket pc phone...and a bunch of other devices i write programs for or write articles about.
i'm a nerd.
cheers,
pt
Steve Jobs heard about the work going on at PARC and offered 100 000 Apple shares in exchange for a demonstration of their work. Some of the PARC people (notably Adele Goldberg) were very unhappy to show Apple what they were doing, but Xerox said 'do it.'
They did it.
Jobs saw the Smalltalk environment, the mouse, pop-up windows, pull-down menus and the rest. So yes, he saw the inspiration for Macintosh windowing, but the Mac interface and the Xerox interfaces are different beasts entirely.
Oh and Xerox did very nicely out of those shares.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Actually, Jobs LOVED it and begged to be involved in the project. The "it sucks" quote came after he had been familiar with the device for months, and was referring specifically to the aesthetic design of the latest version that the team was working on, not the Segway in general.
In any case, I think that Jobs' intense questioning proves that he really was engaged with the product; he treated it just as he would anything Apple designed, and insisted that it hold to the same rigorous standards. That his fears turned out to be well-founded suggests that, no matter how his worries were couched (he does seem to have a penchant for incontinence as metaphor, doesn't he?), his call for a solid business plan, a real launch strategy, and the tripartite mantra of "innovation, elegant and anthropomorphism" would have been well-heeded.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Perhaps if you made the occasional post regarding Microsoft's terrible plague on society or how your children couldn't eat solid foods until you discovered Linux your posts would carry more influence and credibility. Or you could put up a website detailing how you case-modded your Seqway to include transparent panels and flashing neon lights. Your choice.
--
mcp.kaaos
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Don't give a fuck. I don't care. But, I do take issue with your troll comment. I wasn't trying to be a troll. Simply stating that this was a BS story.
My original point, if you read my post, was that this is a non-story. We might as well be asking Ken Lay what he thinks about the global energy markets and this new energy product called "trading". While he may have some expertise and thoughts on the matter, what he says is really not all that important to the success/failure of the product. The same is true here. Who cares what a couple of techo-celebs have to say about a product that has miles and miles to go before it even shows up on peoples radars....
Having interest in such matters is exactly the definition of hype.
Interestingly, Apple's relationship with Smalltalk didn't end with the well known adoption of the mouse, windows, and so forth.
Squeak is a modern Smalltalk-like environment created by a research team at Apple. Disney took up the mantle when Apple decided they didn't want to develop it further. And now the project is on its own. But it's an interesting footnote to the relation of Apple and Smalltalk that not many people know about.
What I love about the way brandido wrote it was:
But that isn't true. He had seen Ginger a day earlier and had time to reflect on the whole thing. He thought it was solid, but lacked a look that people would be drawn to. The quote should have had this additional thought added to it But instead he wanted to go for the shock value. Somehow this appearing on
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Damn, Steve Jobs was on top of things here. He hit the nail on the head and could be considered be 100% right about what he said. Just some of the things he thought:I have to admit - his last point is very good, they had a very narrow market at the start, which alone let it get slammed. From the article:Think about it. Why is one of the biggest reasons that the Segway is slammed? No one has gotten on one. Hell, I would guess very few of us have seen one in person. I saw one briefly, but didn't get a good look at it. I have heard the "It sucks, it sucks", but I don't see a lot of people out there who have used one that could give a solid review of it. There is a little scooter place in the shopping center near my place that does all they can to get their scooters seen. Just from watching people ride them, I have a better feel for what those scooters can do than a Segway.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Supposedly Jobs parks his Jag diagonally across multiple spaces when he drives to Apple. (In some tellings of the story, he regularly blocks handicap spots.)
As the story goes, one day he returns to his car to find a note on it: Park Different
This story may not be true, but if it isn't, it SHOULD be.
Apart from ACAD and some games, kindly give an example or two.
Your "fact" was never really true to begin with, but in the OS X era, just about anything you want to do on a Mac that there isn't a Mac program for, there's probably a UNIX or Linux program out there that will run on the Mac and work just fine. In fact, when you combine all that UNIX/Linux code out there with all the OS X apps, there's probably more software available to an OS X user than there is to a Windows-only zealot.
I have a Windows PC, and these days it only gets switched on when I want to play Neverwinter Nights for a couple hours. I also have a couple Linux boxen which sit untouched in my closet running Apache, Postgres, and a few other server apps (which I could just do on a Mac, but I had a couple old x86 machines lying around, so I put them to good use.)
Everything else I do: programming, editing media content, browsing, arguing on slashdot, exchanging e-mail, word processing, doing my taxes, administrating my web server, audio recording, etc., I do with either my Mac tower or my iBook. Everything.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Yup.
Linux users (for example) are known to keep aging computer hardware useful long after it was left for dead by its former Windows using owner. The open source community consistently manages to squeeze every last ounce of processing power from even the most aged hardware available.
The fastest machines in my house are two PII-400 boxen being used as primary workstation and server running RH9. They do everything I want them to do. And BTW, they were given to me for free. The other server is a P233 on an AT motherboard.
Similarly, Mac users are known to keep their computers as primary productivity tools until the gears fall off.
Right again, but even better. 1 - iMac 333, 1 - iMac 233, 1 - 8500, 1 - 7600, 1 - PB1400c-166, 1 - PB165c, and, recently acquired from the fine dumpster outside my apartment, a 6100-66/DOS all in working shape and useful in one way or another. Oh yeah, a pair of 6100-66's loaned to friends.
The only MS stuff in the house is a Compaq EVO laptop from work running W2K.
I'd say thay pretty well supports oscast's argument of market-share vs. installed-base. And I'm sure there are many here who could provide similar stats. The real question is - how can we be counted?
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?